HOW TO WRITE A DRAMA SERIES TELEVISION OUTLINE

I am fresh back from an amazing time at The London Screenwriter’s Festival, where I did four things of note:

1/ Run my session ‘Sizzle and Substance’with Bafta winning writer and show-runner Barbara Machin and Series Producer of Holby City Simon Harper, about how to navigate the hinter lands between commercialism and creativity in writing and creating series television drama.

2/ Contribute to the session run by the life force that is Pilar Alessandra about how to manage the work/family/life balance.

3/ Flash my cleavage to about 200 people as I clumsily navigated my bra; clipping on my mic before my first session.

4/ Wish Hollywood Legend Joel Schumacher luck, until I realised who he was and attempted to remedy this by adding, rather breathlessly, ‘but you; of course, don’t need it’.

So it was, all round, a rather lovely time.

But what I discussed, with the Prince of Holby City and the Queen Bee of Waking the Dead; the knotty issue in popular television long-form drama, of how to strike a balance between the art form of story telling and the need to keep feeding the ratings machine, still remains fresh in my mind.

For those of you that weren’t there, I wish to share with you some thoughts.

At the Sizzle v Substance Session, we discussed, amongst many other questions:

* What makes a successful drama series/serial?
The answer in a nutshell is the show that has at the point of its creation, the right balance between fresh, creativity and hard-nosed commercialism.
Scott and Bailey.
Shameless.
Broadchurch.

* What works best – pure art or artifice?
Plunging into the nut bowl again; the answer is a combination of both. All successful long form dramas, (essentially those that are episodic and repeating) need a big fat dollop of juicy story at their centre and living in this world, there must be credible, developed, three dimensional characters. They also need a structure, a framework, the scaffolding in place to hold up the creative components of the drama.

Long-form television drama is that illusive hybrid of hard-nosed commercialism and genuine artifice.

With the need to combine the artist and the artisan in mind, when writing successful television drama, here is a story for you:

Back in 1999 I was asked to Produce Holby City series 2. It was expected of me to turn this show around. Holby was then (and still is) a great show, but it was not getting the projected ratings expected of a prime time drama scheduled in the family slot. So I did what any sane producer would do in the circumstances. I appealed to the writers to give me great story.

Within the medical remit of the show (then solely Cardio Thorasic so any condition pertaining to the upper body and heart) writers had to come up with story lines that made a wide demographic sit up and take notice. Cynically, I said we would ‘wrap the medical around’ the essential drive of the stories I was looking for. That is, those that had an emotional heart (forgive the pun) and truth about them. This, in the most part, worked.

But the best episodes of my series, those that gained a 9 million rating and peaked at 10 million at Christmas, where the ones where I had managed to engineer stories that were essentially medical in nature, but those that resonated wider; caused emotional ripples through a variety of characters’ lives.

The example I can give here is the story about a young girl who, suffering from Cystic Fibrosis, had to have both her parents donate a portion of their lung to save their daughter’s life. The father, it turned out, could not contribute. He was not a blood match. And so this story ballooned from a standard ‘I will save you in this medical emergency because I love you’ to a story about long kept family secrets, betrayal and ultimately a fragile re-union between the girl and her real father.

This is an example of a story that has a commercial appeal, and also an emotional root. The Sizzle is there, (the dynamics between a family at war whilst a daughter is dying) but also the Substance (the story ticks all the boxes of a long running drama with a medical precinct).

It’s a knotty problem this. The dual-need to create something fresh, new, different, creative, from a genuinely artistic, credible foundation and that need to also to make this new thing, this new dramatic idea, into a saleable, water-tight, competitive format.

Writers of television drama, have to be multi-facetted by nature.

They are both the creator, or artist, and then the draftsman; they must draw up a blue print for this drama series; make sense of the original artistic splurgings. Then they don the Plumber’s hat. Because they also need to be a hands on practical sort. The sort who can work out all the interconnections between story lines and know how best to maximise the junctions of all those story pipes laid down.

If need be, a television writer needs to know how to make their drama series – flush – or actually work.

You are Jackson Pollock – you splash paint around – but you are also required to bring a bit of Escher to the table; clear thinking, good with line, expert at someone who knows how the bigger picture fits together and to know how to disguise; like all the best craftspeople do, the joints, the joins, the ugly interiors of the drawers and secret compartments of the piece you are crafting out of thin air.

So we need structure as well as innovation in our work as writers and producers of television drama.

Those of you that have bought/shared/looked over someone else’s shoulder whilst they read my book on writing for television; not surprisingly called Writing for Television – Series, Serials and Soaps http://www.amazon.co.uk/Writing-Television-Yvonne-Grace/dp/1843443376/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400840643&sr=1-7&keywords=writing+for+television – will know that in those pages I go into detail about treatments, story line documents and story lines. I go on a lot about using documents and how to do so to make your stories sing as you write your television scripts – I mention the Series Outline, but I do not go much further than that.

I am remedying this here.

How you write a good SERIES OUTLINE for television:

This document is not a dry thing. It is an exciting, vibrant, layered piece of writing that shows, without the use of mirrors or smoke, what your series drama is all about.

It is a microcosm of all your musings; a distillation of the series as a whole. Like the treatment that goes before this, (in terms of your long running story’s development) it condenses the themes, messages, tone, characters, world, main narrative arcs and episode content down to a manageable number of pages.

It is an extension of your idea, but it is not a sentence by sentence, beat by beat description of your series drama.

Do not confuse your SERIES OUTLINE with an EPISODE OUTLINE or, what is called A BEAT SHEET in feature film circles. We use Beat Sheet too now, more often, in television, (trying to keep it real you know) and I like the term because it does what it says on the tin. A Beat Sheet is just that. Story; laid out, beat by beat.

Producers don’t need to see this in your Series Outline.

They want to see and understand and know the following things from your document:

1/ What is the world in which the story is set? Is it an engaging world and how is it so?

2/ Who lives in this world and what are the characters about? What makes them tick? Are these people identifiable? Who will we love? Who will we hate? Who will we hate loving?

3/ What is the content in broad strokes of the first (pilot) episode? What is the content (again, excitingly, enticing told, not beat by beat) of the middle episode and what again, is the end episode’s content? How does this start? How does this series end?

4/ SET PIECES. Producers of tv drama LOVE a set piece. What is the image, the exchange, the moment, the climax of a story line in each of the episodes you are outlining here?
In every episode, in every long form drama format worth its salt, there will be one moment, one image, one sequence that sticks in your mind, while the credits roll and beyond.

Similarly, having read your Series Outline, there will be (if you get it right) at least one singular, memorable moment, or series of moments that stay with the Producer/Commissioner. You need to make sure you have these in your Series Outline.

We are dealing with images, albeit ones told in words; black and white on the page.
Visualise your stories and your Series Outline will come alive and sell your series for you.

There are practical elements to get across in this document too:

1/ Setting 2/ Number of characters 3/ Period or no? 4/ Genre 5/ Episode numbers/format length

Tone. Use the hybrid terminology here. It always works. Sci Fi / Peaky Blinders (that would be an awful show but you get the idea) Downton Abbey/Rom Com (similarly; bound to be terrible, but we know what it is about in two five syllables.)

If, in the development process, you have got to the Series Outline stage, chances are, someone with potential money to make it and a potential route to transmit it, is interested in your idea.

Don’t give them a reason to say no.

Make them fall in love with the sheer story content, the characters, the set pieces, the tone and the overall message of your drama series/serial.

They will, from this moment on, try to make their budget fit your ideas.

Get busy.

Get writing.

My group Script Advice Writer’s Room is great resource for writers of the big and small screen. Writers all actually; there are poets and novelists amongst us – writers who write or radio, theatre as well as television and pen screenplays. Join me and them, here https://www.facebook.com/groups/237330119115/

Twitter: YVONNEGRACE1

Script Advice is here to help.

CONVERSATIONS WITH A STORY TELLER

Canadian J Lynn Stapleton is a writer, photographer and Geriatric Care Nurse who follows me on Twitter. She also loves to blog and interview when she can. Here is her recent interview with her friend, the American tv writer Jill Lorie Hurst.

‘Guiding Light’ was the world’s longest running soap opera until it was axed in 2009.  Jill, like so many television writers, learnt her trade and honed her craft on the show. I have EastEnders to thank for my baptism of fire.  So here, in solidarity, I post Lynn’s interview.

I particularly like what Jill says about the collaborative process of television series writing.  Thanks Lynn for a great interview and insight into the working life of a talented writer and also for allowing me to share it here.

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In the several months previous to the American soap opera, Guiding Light, being cancelled and subsequently going off the air, I made friends with numerous other fans of the show, resulting in meeting in a large fan gathering in New York City to celebrate the final official fan club luncheon with the cast. It would also be the start of a wonderful friendship with one of the head writers of the series very soon after.

Holding various positions within the Guiding Light family from Assistant to the Writers, Scriptwriter, Assistant Head Writer, Story Producer and Co-Head-Writer, Jill Lorie Hurst has won a Daytime Emmy Award for Best Writing (2007), and a Writer’s Guild of America Award for Best Writing (2004), along with several nominations in both awards ceremonies over the years.

Over the past few years, we’ve talked on-line and in person about just about anything that strikes our interest, from soaps, to photography, to life in general. For a long time, I’d felt a bit odd asking a friend for an official interview, primarily about scriptwriting, but decided just to go with it and I’m glad I did.

Lynn: What got you interested in working in television as a writer when you were starting out?

Jill: I never thought about television writing until I started working at the front desk at the studio where Guiding Light was taped. You get to know about people when you wait tables or work at a front desk. The quality of people and storytelling at GL made me want to stay forever! I’d grown up writing, loved theater and I watched the [Proctor & Gamble] P&G soaps, but had no career plan. I left college in 1982 and moved from Detroit to New York City. I waitressed for 10 years and my life was pretty full. Full of theater going, travel and friends. And it was the 80’s – NYC was crackly and crime filled. A number of good friends were dying of AIDS. There was a lot going on, but I loved the restaurant, my co-workers, the customers. Luckily, one of my customers, Grace Bavaro, loved me enough to send me across town for a tour of the GL studio. A year later I started working part time at the front desk. I was in my early 30’s then. I didn’t officially join the show til I was almost 35, and I was close to 40 when I became a staff writer! A late bloomer by TV standards. I never thought of myself as a WRITER. I just wanted to be there and be part of the storytelling process and help put out the “product” on a day to day basis. If the environment at GL hadn’t been so amazing, I might’ve gone back to the restaurant business. I like working with good people, doing work I care about. Thanks to the generosity of some terrific people I got the chance to do that at Guiding Light for many years.

Lynn: When you look for inspiration for stories or dialogue, what are things that grab your interest/attention?

Jill: I’m not a big picture story teller – I tend to think in scenes and characters. I am inspired by people I see on the street, conversations I listen to on the bus, looking in windows as people live their lives. My husband, friends and family inspire me. Sometimes a really basic challenge or thought grabs you – like when Ellen Wheeler challenged all of us to come up with stories that would use P&G products. My choice of product turned into an idea that I still want to produce. A place – like the 24 hour laundromat in my NYC neighborhood – can get things going. I think writers need to look around and listen – that’s one of the reasons I don’t wear ear buds and listen to music on the street – or watch TV on my phone – I might miss a good character or setting!

Lynn: Creating storylines for groups of characters in a soap drama involves a lot of planning, organization and development before it even gets to the writing stage. What was your favourite aspect of storylining an idea for a group or for an individual? And conversely, the worst part?

Jill: I love being in a room with a group of writers when someone first mentions a new idea for a storyline or a couple – that moment when everyone stops for a split second to take it in – and then starts talking and tossing their thoughts into the pot. Story stew! I like story boards – using different color markers and squares of paper to lay out days/weeks/months of story. There’s something kind of intoxicating about moving the people and the scenes around, then finally coming up with the day, the week, etc that you’re happy with. I like having the end of the story up there first, so that we know what we’re writing toward. My other favorite job is script editing. It’s a great job. The best part was having the opportunity to assign a day to the right script writer, cheering them on through the week as they write and then, getting a beautiful script handed back to me. I can rewrite a not so good day if I have to – but I get no thrill out of the rewrite. I think I’m kind of good at knowing who’s good at what – who’s funny, who’s heartbreaking, who’s good at killing off characters (really) – and assigning accordingly! My least favorite part of the process is breakdown writing. Glad I had to do it. Don’t like it. Not very good at it.

Lynn: Have you ever had characters that get stuck in your head, demanding their stories to be told? Or had a particular scene becoming very vivid in your head and then have to write it down?

Jill: When you work on a show, the characters live with you and they tend to be a chatty group. If you listen to them, a lot of the story will unfold. Telling a story you love is so uplifting and fun. You can’t wait to get into the meeting, or sit at the computer (or grab your legal pad in my case) or get on the phone with the other writers. It just…bubbles. And when you’re telling a story you don’t believe in – it’s very upsetting. I used to carry on conversations with characters, other writers, the network in my head as I walked to work and I’m sure my facial expressions and mumbling scared a lot of people. Once someone actually stopped me to ask me if I was okay and I blurted. “No! We’re killing Ben today and we’re doing it for all the wrong reasons”. Yikes.

Lynn: What are some favourite pieces of writing advice given to you when you were starting out, that really stuck with you throughout your career?

Jill: Here are a few –
“When you’re writing the emotional/relationship stuff, keep it tight, contained. If the show is long and those scenes take up too much time they will be the first scenes cut and often that means losing the best stuff in the day. Protect those moments”. – From actress/director Lisa Brown

“There is no such thing as a stupid question. Ask the question.” – From producer Mary O’Leary

“Can we tell that story (write that scene) in 9 lines?” – From actress/executive producer Ellen Wheeler

“Don’t tiptoe into your scenes. Walk in, you have the right to be there.” – From writer/producer Claire Labine (when I asked for breakdown writing notes)

Lynn: Following Guiding Light’s cancellation, you had joined up writing for former GL actress, Crystal Chappell’s two-time Daytime Emmy Winner, ‘Venice the Series’ web soap for seasons three and four – and currently fifth season – of the series. What’s it been like switching from writing for a network soap opera to writing for a web platform soap opera?

Jill: Network vs. the web – It’s still serial storytelling, which is the great thing. I love the Venice characters. I’m more of a writer on this show and not part of the rest of the production team, which forces me to use different muscles. I’ve learned to collaborate on the phone, which has always been hard for me! I’m still wrestling with technology and realize how spoiled I was at GL, when I could scribble a scene on a legal pad and stand there looking crazy til Amanda took it away from me and said “That’s okay, Jilly. I’ve got it.” I’m glad our characters can swear and kiss and make love if the story calls for it! I love the freedom, but I miss some of the checks and balances that come with working for the network – they force you to try harder and find different ways to tell the stories you care about. Life is all about picking your battles. When I was on GL and we were answering to both P&G and CBS, we won some important battles, which was great – and we lost some fights that broke our hearts, both as writers and people. I learned a lot from all of those experiences.

Lynn: Are there any other series, either television or web, that you’d love to work on/ work with? Or have you any of your own projects that you’d love to start/continue with?

Jill: We just sent Venice 5 to Crystal and will start the edit as soon as we get her notes this week. I love working with Penelope [Koechl, co-writer] and we have a few ideas we’re discussing. I have to finish my book and there’s another project that needs to be attended to! I don’t think about writing Guiding Light any more – but the Guiding Light actors are so talented and inspiring that whenever I am working on anything, their beautiful faces and voices float through my head. I’d like to write them in very different roles. They are a great rep company. Mostly, I’m looking to tell stories that mean something and work with people I enjoy. That’s the plan. Hey, you made me come up with a plan! Thanks, my friend.

Well, I wish I had a lofty answer, but truth be told, we are sitcom junkies at our house. Modern Family saved our lives this year, along with Frasier, Roseanne and Cosby Show reruns – but sitcoms are serials too – family relationships, overcoming obstacles, love stories! I also love Orange is the New Black, The Good Wife and I think House of Cards is fascinating. Still like Grey’s Anatomy. Catching up on Parenthood, Last Tango in Halifax. I miss Friday Night Lights and Gilmore Girls. I like to think, but I like to laugh and cry and connect when I watch a show.

If you would like to see the interview on Lynn’s blog here it is and a couple of lovely pics to boot of Jill and Lynn in NYC Central Park. http://celtic-dragon.me/2014/08/03/conversation-with-a-storyteller/

THE BBC WRITERS’ FESTIVAL 2014 – From a Writer’s Perspective

I asked Jayne Lake; writer, twitterer, facebook member of my group Script Advice Writer’s Room and all round good egg, to pen me a blog about what she took from the BBC Writers’ Festival 2014. Here it is….

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The fifth BBC TV Drama Writers’ Festival came to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, a one-time Victorian wheat store transformed into uber-cool lecture rooms and rubber clad studios for arty types, it’s industrial strength air con much needed – by me.

Kate Rowland and her team sprinkled fairy dust over the unrivalled schedule, I made a point of selecting all the available sessions about ‘women on the box’. Apart from the short notice withdrawal of doyenne Sally Wainwright, this year’s strong female line-up would not disappoint.

Keynote If Content is King, Where’s our Crown? – Like an entertaining fruit and veg wholesaler Tony Jordan outlined established and newly forming markets for drama output and gave us his rally call to feed the ever-hungry story beast. A community of writers drawn together to listen, learn, share and contribute, we are all connected, he tells us ‘[by] story struggling to tear itself from our souls’. Feeling a smidgeon taller, I floated off to my first sesh, my life’s goal to: ‘create something extraordinary’ tucked under my heavy-duty bra strap. Can-do-will-do-stuff indeed.

Developing Your Character – Writer Danny Brocklehurst discussed his writing process behind Exile and disgraced journo Tom Ronstadt (John Simm) – a character who returns to his backwater hometown to discover his once brutal father in the grip of Alzheimer’s. It’s the way his character relates in any given moment that hooks his audience Danny argues. There is a mystery to solve – why did a once beloved father violently banish his son? But whilst plot is crucial, for Danny character always lies at the starting block and at the heart. In Barbara Machin’s long-runner Waking the Dead the emphasis shifts. Character is the ‘elephant in the room’, what’s not said speaking volumes about protagonists the audience comes to love over time. Her characters develop in ‘slow burn… [they] occupy a deeper emotional place… [big] event moments allow new and exciting chinks in character’. Danny talked about writing self-indulgent ‘physical’ directions in the first draft to inform himself as much as anything else. Subsequent drafts stripped back to allow the actors and director to do the work. Someone asked Danny and Barbara to name memorable leading female characters in British drama. Time was up, a session for next year, or the year after, perhaps.

Women in TV: Unfinished Business – Head of Drama Scotland Chris Aird chaired a superb discussion on women in TV. Pier Wilkie and China Moo Young (Director/Producer-Director) and Sally Abbott (Writer) talked about working at the BBC and in the independent sector, giving anecdotes about obstructive others and critical selves. Sally described her early battles with self-confidence until a cathartic light bulb moment freed her from a creative cul-de-sac. Although her juggle with deadlines, kids and a rescue dog is not easy, she knows the value of her own voice now and rightly excels in it with the support of her family.

Pier Wilkie talked about the huge financial pressures on drama production. When she’s looking to hire the stakes are enormous, she needs ‘experience’ first. Conversely women can’t get experience as writers, producers and directors unless someone is prepared to take a financial (and I might argue here) conscious punt on an unknown quantity. There was a rumbling anxiety in the room – won’t moaning about inequality alienate the powers that be? To be valued in the industry, women need ‘an assured and calm and measured’ outlook – nothing divaesque!

Do women only write ‘domestic’ or are there any opportunities in genre? A mixed response from the panel but isn’t domestic writing just screaming babies, preeclampsia, dirty nappies? Is it that little show with nine million viewers Call The Midwife or maybe it’s Pier’s much acclaimed BBC 3 Murdered By My Boyfriend – both dramas depicting the stuff of life and death and everything in between. More next year on what women write/want to write. Maybe.

Do We Need Treatments? – A blessed rest from all this angsty feminist malarchy! Bryan Elsley’s entertaining take on the writer’s roadmap, he argues we need treatments to encapsulate the semi-coherent ‘idea’. The first draft treatment is the ‘what if’ document, the blueprint created by the ‘organized magician’ within. This is the place where Bryan feels most confident but for the production company the fully worked version is the solid thing that says this is ‘our property’, our development ‘asset’. Bryan’s advice is that the exec wants pure story. Some shot based treatments work well but may be too directorial? The exec’s bus or tube ride is a finite thing so as a guide; fit your story into his/her journey to work. A narrative based approach enables a quick read. For series treatments each ep should imply a defining event best embedded in its title. Set out the arc, the movements and connections between the episodes. Name characters with a brief description and how they relate to one another. Write the ‘out’, or in other words: Why you are the writer for this project and where your work sits in the market. Clarify the thing that is worth the money creatively and spiritually, then reduce the entire document by 10%! Don’t reference other shows – your story is ‘unique’. Be illusive. Tonal. Box clever.

Keynote The Two Tones – Tony J in relaxed conversation with Director General Tony Hall who affirmed his commitment to creativity, diversity and risk taking across drama at the BBC. Did you know that, despite his previous gig at The Royal Opera House, Tony Hall’s a real man of the people now he’s binge watched Happy Valley? Yay! The ‘Two Tone’s’ conversation flowed, Liverpudlian roots and regenerated accents made them blood brothers right? Tony J slipped comfortably back into expletive heavy. Tony H didn’t seem to mind and I felt assured this effusive, passionate bloke liked what we do and he wouldn’t let us down.

How I write – Sarah Phelps’s research task for BBC 1 six-parter The Crimson Field was gargantuan, not least because much of what we think we know about The Great War is so misshapen by the ‘heroic lies’ of history, mediated accounts of the men and women on the Western Front. Sarah’s main resource came in the form of Lyn MacDonald’s The Roses of No Man’s Land, a contemporary account of the women who volunteered to serve in the medical tents not a stones throw away from the trenches. So much material was handed over to Sarah that she was oftentimes overwhelmed, she made hard decisions about what to read and what to include whilst still staying true to her raw writers voice and trying to keep her sanity! For an hour Sarah had us spellbound as she recounted anecdote after anecdote about these brave women and men’s lives, many of whom found themselves transported from their genteel Edwardian British society into the bloody heart of the first world war. Off by heart, Sarah concluded her talk with Thomas Hardy’s 1916 poem In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’. Beyond moving.

Face to Face with Abi Morgan – I wanted to know every juicy detail, who, after all, wouldn’t want her life? Abi left university and got work imputing data about the building she worked in. Aside from the computer, she was entirely on her own in this empty office block; her employers didn’t seem to care what she did or how long she took to do the job. She wrote her first screenplay and didn’t input data. She got paid. For FIVE YEARS. It was great, she achieved tons. She was horrendously lonely. Today Abi has a partner and two children. When the children were small she worked from home but they’re older now, more distracting. Abi is currently working in an office at Kudos. Undisturbed. Abi’s working day is from 9 – 7. Sometimes this is filled to busting writing and sometimes she gets distracted by Solitaire Blitz. Yes! Yes! Yes!

Abi writes what she finds ‘profoundly moving’ and advises writers to ask of themselves always: ‘what is this story about?…[And] give something of yourself’. Have an outline, keep poetics minimal, tone is paramount. Abi doesn’t read back her early drafts she just clicks ‘send’! An audible incredulity (on my part covetous!) spread amongst the audience, this writer obviously is self-aware, majorly confident (not arrogant, I did not find her so) and brave. In the Q&A someone asked what work she was most proud of writing? And I was knocked sideways by her response…. introspective for a moment: ‘pride is something I find hard to associate with what I do’. What!? With such an influential body of work behind and undoubtedly in front of her how on earth can this possibly be? I may have misunderstood my heroine here but why the hell shouldn’t she be proud of what she’s achieved? It seems that women writers, even at the very pinnacle of the industry recoil from publicly blowing their own trumpet. Love her.

Keynote Unstoryfiable – Documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis believes story is in mortal decline, news on a continuous loop, nothing resolves. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Cisco reducing everything to a manipulated, homogenous stream, the worlds financial markets unelected and unchecked. Curtis calls this the ‘algorithm loop of news, power, money, media and [subsequently] STORY’. I understood in principle where this guy was coming from, I felt for him – for us, but rather than be gloomy I should go do something about this heinous state of affairs shouldn’t I? I mean I should write something… write something really ‘extraordinary’.

Adjusts bra strap. Clicks send.

Thank you Jayne for sharing your experience of the Festival with the Script Advice readership.
Contact me: http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk for help with your television writing and buy my book on the subject http://www.amazon.co.uk/Writing-Television-Yvonne-Grace/dp/1843443376/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1400840643&sr=1-7&keywords=writing+for+television

WRITING TO GET NOTICED: FIVE WAYS A WRITER CAN STAND OUT IN TELEVISION

 

 

 You have been writing for a while now;  honing your craft;  you are serious about being  a professional writer, one who gets paid for the scripts they produce and you have decided you want to be a Television Writer and As Soon As Possible.

There are doors in your way.

All of them closed right now.   And non open automatically.

Doors worth passing through are like that.  Doors that open automatically do so for a reason.

 

 

Supermarket doors want your money. Shopping Arcades make getting in, and spending money easier by whizzing open with lightening speed, sensing your approach ‘come in, who ever you are, come in come in’.

 

Televison doors are much more selective.

In my book;  Writing For Television; Series, Serials and Soaps I go into more detail as to how you can garner the skill base you need to get through that shut door and into a busy drama production office and so on to a show as a writer, but here for ease and quick reference, I set out the TOP FIVE WAYS to get seen, heard, and commissioned in television.

1/ BE TRUE TO YOUR OWN PERSONAL VOICE

I will take it as a given that you are writing every day.  You need to do this like breathing.  The writing muscle needs consistent and dedicated work outs to keep it in shape.  The way you look at the world, even at the most everyday things, is where your strength as a writer lies.  Only you can tell it how you see it.  So keep doing that every day.  And finish what you start.

2/ GET NETWORKING

There is no longer any excuse for any one of us to hide our talent or to shy away from the public eye.  If you want to be a professional writer working in television, you can be as retiring as you like in your personal life, but you owe it to your creative ability and desire to furnish yourself a healthy writing career, to be as open and as communicative as you can possibly be.  Getting the most out of the social networks available to us as switched on writers is key to getting heard and getting noticed.  There are people out there that can help you begin to push on that door, so make sure you connect with not only like-minded types on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace etc, but also have no fear in asking to connect with producers, script editors and established writers.  In my experience, most people, even if they are quite high up the television tree, are approachable and open to making contact with writers that are serious about what they do.  Just make sure you do the contacting with politeness and grace.

3/ GET UP TO SPEED

Don’t get found out.  Make sure, before you send your work out to people you have made contact with, that your script delivers the polished professional look that will be expected by the industry in general.  So it really is worth investing in a reputable script editing professional or script development exec (like myself!) to make sure your work cuts the mustard.  A professional script editor will be looking not only at the essential creative elements of your script (narrative, structure, characterisation, dialogue, tone, pace etc) but also will obliquely have noted in the first read, whether the layout meets the industry standard.

Layout, scene headings, scene description, page count, all these details are not what will get you a commission, should they be beautifully and correctly present in your script, but they will stop you being commissioned if they are not there at all.

So get your head around the nuts and bolts of script appearance and stick to the rules of script layout.  No point trying to re-invent the wheel when the wheel has been turning smoothly in this way for decades.

4/ BEAT THE ZEIGEIST

Television drama feeds off ideas.  Dramatic stories form the vital food group all television production and broadcasters need.  So the journey to the door, which we endeavour to open, begins with your idea.  Make it a commercially savvy one as well as being a creative and interesting one.

Television drama producers want to make money, appeal to a mass audience, deliver quality on time and to budget.  No one wants to lose money and fail the ratings war.  So ideas must be boyant, strong, and have a rock solid human appeal.

There is a reason why there is a steady stream of ‘precinct’ dramas like Holby City and Happy Valley on television.  Although these two examples are obviously clearly different creatures, they are formed from the same gene pool.  Their DNA is similar.  A format you can return to.  A strong set of characters to which we can relate.  Both prodcedural (one medical, one police) both informed and infused with relatable characters and cracking story lines that have immediate resonance and impact on a wide ranging audience demographic.

Often the strongest dramas on television are those that cover tried and tested ground but come at the subject from an oblique angle.

In television it is all about the angle.

In Broadchurch, Chris Chibnail cleverly focused on the impact the suspicious death of a child had on the community that child lived in.  In Last Tango In Halifax, the relationship between two oldies (not the most original idea) was explored to perfection by Sally Wainwright as she cast an unforgiving light on the pre-conceptions of the families involved.

If you are coming up with ideas that you then frustratingly see on screen; celebrate, don’t get bitter.  You are doing it right.  You have tapped into the Zeitgeist.  You just have to keep doing it because you will, eventually, be one step head of it, and that is just the right place to be for a television writer.

5/ RELIABLY DELIVER

So let’s say you have done what you once thought unthinkable, and walked through the door and a television person (script editor, producer, development script editor) is asking to see your work. This is now the time to shine.

Only deliver what they asked for.

Do it before they expect it, but once done, do not chase until at least 2 weeks have elapsed. Then do so politely and with an open mind.

If you said you were going to deliver a treatment with your script then make sure you have done.  And make no mistake here, treatments in television are not the chunky tomes they sometimes are in the film industry.  Keep your treatment (your selling document) as succinct and as interesting as you can.  I like to say 6 pages maximum.

Once comissioned, keep up the momentum.  You need to be the writer the industry see as both consistently good and reliably dependable. Be the writer everyone wants to commission.  No point in being tricky, difficult, vague or generally rubbish at meeting deadlines.  Be the good guy.

I hope you get to open those doors – the ones that are presently closed to you.  Use my book and blogs, get professional script editing help and keep honing your craft; remember – you have the key.

Pre-order your copy of my book here – out in June published by Kamera Books

http://www.kamerabooks.co.uk/creativeessentials/writingfortelevision/index.php?title_isbn=9781843443377

Contact me for help with your scripts http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk

Follow me on Twitter: YVONNEGRACE1 and join my group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/237330119115/

Happy Writing!

THE CREATION SPARK

 My son has Chicken Pox. He is not at school and as I type this, he watches his favourite Lego-themed DVD; ‘Clutch Powers’; Malick The Maligned has stolen  Clutch’s father’s Creation Spark….I feel a blog coming on………….

 Do you have a bank of ideas? A space in your head where your (as yet) unwritten ideas come from? Some writers I work with have a drawer (metaphorical or actual) where their ideas languish until realised on paper. Others don’t sweat it, but rather expect their creative ideas to come whilst doing something entirely different. Usually repetitive, or mundane tasks, like housework or driving, or taking a bath.

 I have worked with writers who must finish one idea in script form, before moving on to the next. The opposite also is true and a lot of writers I help, have more than one idea,  at varying stages of development.

 There is no right or wrong way, to creating, devising, grabbing-out-of-thin-air, dramatic conceits for the screen. But every writer I have come across has their particular way; something pertinent to them, that aids the creative process.

 The urge to tell stories is innate all of us. Some people become more obsessed with the process than others and it is this obsession that separates writers from other people; those that like a good story, but are not concerned about the process of telling one well. The latter is a fixation afflicting all writers I work with. And as a writer myself, I empathise.

 The chances are if you are a writer, that you will spend a disproportionate part of your day observing your life in a removed sense; a part of your brain appraising the view from your car, office or kitchen window as a potential scene opener, or the dialogue you over hear on the bus or in the supermarket check out queue becomes great material for a couple of characters you have been bringing to life. Imagery, snatches of dialogue, smells, sounds and the way these things click together, forms the building bricks of future scripts.

 And the key to getting these disparate, eclectic images and snatches of spoken word into the beginnings of a beginning, are the connections, the correlations and the relationships you find between the various components of your script.

 The narrative: story + plot + subtext; must tie into, weave through and relate to, the visual side of your story; imagery and text work together, counter balancing the narrative, or highlighting aspects of it. Both must be present and both have a specific job to do in the telling of your story.

 Your voice; the essential component of all script writing that is particular only to the creator, provides that vital element of a successful piece of screenwriting – the message. There must be a reason why you wrote this script and this reason must come across subliminally, suggestively, subtly, to your audience. It is your voice, your intent, that comes through in the end.

 Why tell your story in script format in the first place?

I hazard an opinion here, that you want to tell your story in scenes, filmed by a camera and cut together to make a cohesive narrative, because you are an immediate sort of story teller. You like narrative that has a pace, a rhythm, a beat.

 Television writers understand the pr0cussive nature of good story telling. There is always an under tow of momentum in anything worth screen time.

 So the idea has hit home. You need to get this down before it either drives you mad, or goes away entirely.

 * Pitch it to yourself in a couple of pithy, grabby, interesting lines. If the idea has a purpose, a message and a natural shape, it will become apparent here.

 * Then do a quick plot outline. A meets B and C happens. Still hold water? Carry on.

 * Write a treatment. No more that eight pages. Six if you can control yourself that much. Less is more. Here’s my blog on definitive treatment writing for quick reference: https://scriptadvice.wordpress.com/2014/02/12/the-definitive-guide-treatments-for-series-and-serials/

 * Scrivener, Final Draft, or doing it by hand, now you need to plot your character story arcs across your script. I use post-its, or cards stuck on a wall. You will be able to see at glance, where your plot has holes, or where you need to beef up a story line for a character. Points of contact, of cross-over and correlation will now present themselves between your various story lines.

 * Write your script outline. Order your scenes roughly. Using broad strokes, don’t get bogged down in ‘he said then she said’ detail; you will hate yourself and it will be both dull to write and duller to read. This document will highlight the push and pull of your story line; the pace and beat of it. If you find it a good read, then the first draft of your script will reflect this.

 Several drafts later, you have your idea fully realised. From creative spark to full script.

 Take heart; it is impossible for your creative spark to be stolen. The world around you reflects back into the inner eye of the writer; Malick the Maligned, be warned.

 Get help with your creative projects: http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE: TREATMENTS for series and serials.

Over the last few months, via my work with writers at all levels of experience and development and through teaching writers at my workshops, I have found that for a lot of you, the area of treatment writing is the most tricky.

There is some really good advice out there regarding treatment writing, but much of it covers treatments for the feature film industry, with the occasional nod towards the smaller screen. I felt the need then, to write a blog that focuses entirely on that which the Television Industry expects of a treatment.

Here are the key areas to make sure you get right and get in, when writing.

Your treatment must have:

 * CLARITY

* VISION

* CHARACTER

* STORY

* A MESSAGE

 CLARITY:

The reason why I have seen so many projects fall by the way side over the years I have spent in development, is because often the treatment does not support the original idea.

The irony here is that the writer in question may have delivered a storming pitch for their embryonic idea during our conversation which may have started with something like ‘what are you working on at the moment?’.

Then, in our follow up meeting (in the words of Frank Sinatra) they ‘go and spoil it all by saying something stupid’.  Not, to quote the song; ‘I love you’ (that would put the kibosh on any potential partnership) but more likely something like ‘ this is the treatment for the idea I had. It’s a work in progress, but I wanted you to have the gist of it’.

No. Treatments are not about ‘the gist’. Treatments contain all of the vital elements of your world. Laid out. In a pleasant black and white font. They will be between 4 and 8 pages long and be above all things; easy to read; a linear trestle table of mixed fare, presented clearly, for a potential buyer to see at a glance.

Treatments contain the kernel, the nub, the essence of your idea. They also should contain the extension, the continuation, the development of the idea you first came up with. The centre of this world, in story terms and it’s attendant parts, must be represented here.

The language is simple, but direct. The phrasing is uncomplicated, the tone reflects the subject of your treatment.

You are not writing a shopping list, nor are you constructing a poem. You are not florid, or over flamboyant but you are, in the name of clarity, succinct.

VISION:

This is not a dry document. This is your potential series or serial distilled to it’s most arresting, alluring components. So it must be not only written with an eye on the visual aspect of your story, (never forget that we are in the business of creating stories for a visual medium) but also contain the element of vision; that is, bring to the table a new way of looking at the world.

The treatment shines a light on the story you present via your own special perspective.

I am not advocating that you re-invent the wheel here. Far from it. I hope your treatment contains a dramatic idea that hits the Zeitgeist and that is in turn, both creatively inspiring and also commercially savvy. We don’t want something too crazy. Just different. In a good way. I know…. it’s not easy.

There are the tried and tested areas that producers love; the medical precinct (or backdrop) the fire fighters, the police procedurals, the murder mystery formats and the period drama serials. There will always be at least one of these dramas in the mix of a commercially viable channel, but within these ‘safe’ areas; there is room for experimentation.

If you are going down the route of the ‘been before’ subject than make rock solid certain it has a angle, a take, a vision that is purely new and purely you.

CHARACTER:

Often when I am talking telly, the subject of characterisation comes up. It is one of the legs on which the edifice of television drama is built.

Characters inform the world of your treatment. It is through their eyes that ultimately, your audience will see your world.

Avoid at all costs cliche and it goes without saying, two dimensional, stereotypical characters. You are a story teller; you have a narrative vision and you have created these characters to carry your story across more than one episode of drama. I am probably on fairly safe ground then when I say, ensure you have created characters solid and developed enough to carry your story lines.

Characters enact the text (they do things) and they motivate the subtext (they feel, react, and behave accordingly). So give your characters something to do and something to believe in.

In the treatment, each character you create has a job to do in narrative terms. You need to clarify what this journey is for each character and bring a suggestion forward, of what they are going to learn in the process. Tease here. No need to lay it all out. Keep something back. But engage the reader in a guessing game as to what will happen next for your characters.

A treatment containing fabulous, rounded, likeable, unlikeable, engaging characters will always leap off the page. Often it is at this hurdle that treatments fail however.

This is because carefully crafted characters have to do something, learn something, affect something and say something before the treatment will work. In short. There has to be a story.

STORY:

Well am I stating the obvious here? Probably, but as is the case when I find myself discussing the need for great characters in drama treatments, along comes the sister obvious point; let it have a story.

The hardest part of treatment writing is often the demands a good one makes on your skill in being succinct, pithy and lean when it comes to summing up the idea in an easily digested paragraph.

We call this the logline.

What’s this about? Who is it about? What are the stakes here and How does it end?

This is ‘Full English’; a series I wrote a while back about the world of the Bed and Breakfast.

‘Evelyn Moon makes Boudicca look like Pam Ayers when it comes to fighting the battle of the full house every holiday season. Her bete noir comes from an unlikely source from which not even her Grade II listing can shield her’.

 Next you need to nail the structure. And this is where the all import serial element comes in. Make sure you have created enough ‘legs’ in your story, to go the distance of more than one episode.

You may chose to tell your story through the eyes of one character; originally, in series one of ‘Life On Mars’ for example; we saw through Jon Sim’s character, what the world of 1970’s police procedure looked like. Or, you may want to introduce your world through an ensemble cast. For example; Last Tango In Halifax begins with a couple of characters, sending shock waves through their families, or in the case of The Syndicate, Kay Mellor takes us through the process of winning the lottery via her tightly knit group of characters.

Either way, which ever structural route you chose, you must lay this out clearly in your treatment, so a potential producer can see at a glance, how the story unfolds from the first episode to the last.

At treatment stage, it is not necessary to go into beat by story beat of each episode. It is however, important that you show the broad strokes of each episode, taking the narrative from the first through to the last episode.

You can go into more detail for the first episode, but again, try and write this as engagingly as possible. There is nothing as dull in the drama landscape as a treatment that says ‘then she says, then he says, then this happens after that happens’. We don’t want to know this. We do want to know what the main beats are in the episodes you propose to explore and we do want to know how this affects your characters and the main protagonist(s).

A MESSAGE:

A good treatment does not preach but it does leave the reader with a firm message.

What is it you want your potential producer to be thinking about when they have finished reading?

A special treatment leaves a taste in the mouth that the seasoned producer and reader of many treatments, will enjoy savouring for a while.

A story is only as good as what it says about the world. You are presenting in your treatment, your take on a subject matter and describing a world created by you for the purpose. This is a credible, dramatic world of human dynamic and action, but unless you want the reaction to be ‘so what?’ have something to actually say and say it as clearly as you can.

For example, a story about a group of characters winning big money on the lottery turns out to be a salient commentary on how money changes people. (The Syndicate). A Detective Sargent, via his rites of passage experience on a Caribbean Island, discovers never to judge a book by it’s cover and learns to ditch his preconceptions about other cultures (Death In Paradise).

To Sum Up

A typical treatment will have the following components:

TITLE.

FORMAT.

LOGLINE.

THE STORY TABLE.

THE CHARACTER BIOGS

THE MESSAGE

Learn more about the skills necessary to be a writer for television, in my new book: Television Writing: Series. Serials. Soaps out in June 2014. You can pre-order your copy here:

http://www.kamerabooks.co.uk/creativeessentials/writingfortelevision/index.php?title_isbn=9781843443377

Get in touch via my website if you need me to help get your script on track: http://www.scriptadvice.co.uk

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/YVONNEGRACE1

Join my group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/scriptadvice/

Happy Treatment Writing!